But that would be…well, Kel wasn’t sure what it would be, but he wasn’t going to do it. He was going to help Dorna get the fil drepessis safely back to Shepherd’s Well. After that, there would be plenty of time to go back to Smallgate and find Ezak.
He stooped and picked up the fil drepessis. It was heavy, as he had expected, but not unmanageable. With an effort, he heaved it up onto his shoulder.
“Ezak, you stinking son of a minor demon, get back here!” Dorna shouted, waving her fist in the air. Kel shook his head. That wouldn’t do any good; Ezak did what he pleased, regardless of what anyone said. He always had, and Kel supposed he always would. When they were children Kel had admired Ezak for it, but more recently he had begun to wish Ezak would behave better; he was tired of running and hiding and having no other friends. Kel began trudging toward the sorcerer’s widow, the heavy talisman on his shoulder.
He was about twenty feet away when Dorna turned and saw him. “I suppose you’re going to steal that, now?” she said.
“No,” Kel said, not stopping. The possibility had not even occurred to him. “I’m just taking my turn carrying it. It’s a long way back to Shepherd’s Well, so I thought we might as well get started.”
Dorna glared at him as he approached. “I can’t stop you from taking it,” she said. “I don’t have any more magic.”
“You have that crooked black weapon. Or you could just trip me, or hit me with something-I can’t run or dodge while I’m carrying this, it’s too heavy. But I’m not stealing it.”
“Why not?”
Kel sighed. “Because you have the weapon and I can’t run, and because I don’t want to. It’s yours.”
Dorna stared at him for another few seconds, then burst into tears.
Kel stopped. He considered putting down the fil drepessis to comfort her, but the thought of lifting it again once it was off his shoulder was daunting, and he didn’t really understand why she was upset, and he had no right to touch her. Instead, after a brief pause, he resumed his slow walk and said, “Come on. Irien is waiting.”
She was still snuffling as he trudged past her, but she turned and followed him.
They had gone most of a mile, and Dorna had dried her eyes, when she said, “I suppose you’re going to meet Ezak somewhere and split the loot.”
Kel needed one hand to steady the talisman, but he turned up the other one. “We don’t have anything planned,” he said. “But I can probably find him back in Ethshar, and he’ll probably give me a share, if there’s anything to share.”
“What do you mean, if there’s anything to share? The sorcery in that bag must be worth fifty rounds of gold!”
“Is it really?” Kel asked, astonished. “That’s a lot of money.” It was, in fact, an almost unimaginable amount of money.
“The thing on your shoulder is worth at least twice that,” Dorna replied.
Kel glanced at the talisman on his shoulder. It was large and heavy, but it was compact, and the leg-ribs made it easy to hold onto. It did not look as if it was worth all that money, but he knew he wasn’t a very good judge of value, so he didn’t say anything..
“Why wouldn’t there be anything to share?” Dorna demanded.
Kel sighed. “Because,” he said, “when Ezak gets it back to Ethshar he’ll either take it to one of the fences in Smallgate, the people who buy and sell stolen things-”
“I know what a fence is,” Dorna interrupted.
“Oh. Well, he’ll either take it to a fence, or he’ll go to Wizard Street in Eastside and look for a buyer there. The thing is, most of the fences don’t like him and don’t trust him. He’s broken a lot of promises, and sold them things that weren’t what he said they were. They might just take the bag from him, beat him up, and throw him in a gutter somewhere; it’s not as if a thief can go to the magistrate about someone stealing the things he stole.”
“Oh,” Dorna said.
“Or he might try to hide most of the magic, and sell it a little at a time, so the buyer would pay up to get the rest, but that doesn’t always work. When Perrea the Rat-Chaser tried that with the stuff she stole from the ruins when Firizal the Blue accidentally turned himself into a dragon and wrecked his shop, Vorak the Fence followed her back to her hole and took everything she had.”
“Oh,” Dorna said again.
“If he goes to Wizard Street-well, the thing is, Ezak always tells some fancy story about where he got whatever it is he’s trying to sell. The fences don’t care, but if a magician knew Ezak was telling lies about where the talismans came from, and some magicians have magic that tells them when someone is lying, well, he might tell the magistrate, or the guardsmen. That would be bad.”
“I see,” Dorna said.
They walked on in silence for awhile after that, as the sun sank toward the western horizon. Then Dorna asked, “Why do you stay with him?”
Kel blinked. “With Ezak?”
“Yes.”
“Because we’re friends. He takes care of me.”
“It seems to me that you take care of him.”
“Sometimes,” Kel agreed.
“It sounds as if he gets you both into trouble a lot.”
“Sometimes,” Kel repeated.
“You might do better on your own,” she said.
Kel shook his head. “Ezak is smarter than I am. I need him.”
“No, he isn’t smarter. He’s an idiot.”
“He’s always been smarter,” Kel insisted.
“When you were kids, maybe-he’s older than you?”
“A couple of years, at least. We don’t really know exactly how old he is.”
“Well, you aren’t kids any more, and believe me, Kel, you’re smarter than he is.”
Kel shook his head and said nothing.
A moment later he said, “He’s bigger than me. He protects me.”
“You wouldn’t need so much protecting if he wasn’t getting you in trouble!”
“He’s my friend.”
“Sooner or later, he’s going to get one of you killed.”
Kel didn’t answer.
The sun was down, and the light was fading, so that Kel no longer saw every rock or rathole and stumbled occasionally as they marched on across the fields, when Dorna suddenly said, “You know there’s still plenty of sorcery in the wagon back at the Golden Rooster, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Kel said.
“So you know I’m going to use it to hunt him down and get my things back?”
“Yes,” Kel said again.
“I warned him.”
“Yes, you did.”
She stared at him for a moment, then said, “For your sake, I won’t kill him if I can avoid it.”
“Thank you,” Kel said. He pointed at a farmhouse ahead, where a lamp had just flared up in a window. “Could we stop there for the night?”
“We can ask,” Dorna said. “I wonder where Ezak will sleep?”
“Probably in a ditch somewhere,” Kel said. “He doesn’t have any money.”
Dorna grimaced; Kel could see that, even in the dim light.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “He’s used to it.”
CHAPTER TEN
The farmer had been happy to provide food and lodging for a price that was only mildly outrageous; Kel thought it was a very good thing that Dorna had kept her purse on her belt, and not put it in the canvas bag with her magic. Kel had hoped that the obviously-magical fil drepessis might intimidate their host into accommodating them for free, or at least very cheaply, but instead it appeared to have the opposite effect. Even though the farmer had no idea what it was, and neither Dorna nor Kel would tell him, he seemed to think that its presence meant that his guests were magicians, despite their claims to the contrary. Everyone knew magicians were all rich and could afford to pay any amount asked. Dorna was too tired, and too angry at Ezak, to be in the mood for negotiations, and agreed on the bill with only minimal haggling.